


We should hide in bed so I’m close to you

by MamaWeeds



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Dissociation, F/F, Homophobia, Lexa's home life sucks, Misgendering, Sort of a 'reincarnated over and over' soulmates thing, and conversion therapy, but - Freeform, heart eyes, lots of pining, no tragedy here, pray-away-the gay camp, with tons of internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:15:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaWeeds/pseuds/MamaWeeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For this moment, in this lifetime, this is the Lexa she will be. Culled by swamp heat, soft as magnolia, a newspaper columnist, the quietest girl on the soccer team, pining for escape to college, screaming only into a pillow and shedding fugitive tears only under the pummeling heat of the shower stream. "</p><p>Where Clarke and Lexa fall in love, again and again, over hundreds of existences-- or, their parents think it's a great idea to send their daughters to 'conversion therapy' camp to make them straight. AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Think "But I'm a Cheerleader" but add angst, soulmates, and bisexual representation

It’s always been dreams, every night. 

 

They play in a rotational clockwork every day of the week, so consistently that she could mark time with their passing. Flashes of _things_ mostly— a million different dresses, a scythe, a jar of buttons, a burlap doll, a knife hewn from stone, a red bicycle, cigarettes. Things she’s owned in her past lives with significance stripped neatly away and only basal memory left. Some of the items she doesn’t have names for, and not even the internet can fill in the gaps. 

 

Sometimes there is more. Sometimes she’s seeing life in a distant form, pantomiming the past without the stabilizing context of time and space.

 

When she’s twelve she remembers an old fashioned wind-up alarm clock, perched on a bedside table, blaring noise that was not of the world she knew. There were warm blankets wrapped around her and someone was knocking at her door, telling her to _get up, get up, you’re going to be late for school again!_

 

At age eight she spends the night splashing on a bright, hot beach with the other children of a little village by the sea. They’re all naked and sunburnt and blighted by sand rash and deliriously happy as they play games— chase and tag and tackle. A woman in an apron comes to the edge of the sand above her and says _it’s time to come in love_. She remembers what the words meant but she does not recognize the language they are in. 

 

She’s not had to remember a death yet, and she’s grateful, but there is terror sometimes, and pain. These nights are hard. She remembers gaunt and starving. She knows many a wasted and dying little body. She can feel the phantom aches left behind from a paralyzed spine, immobile from the waste down, something incalculably heavy pinned on legs that she can no longer feel. She suffers through a night coughing apart her own lungs and another attempting to extricate her twisted arm from the wreck of some machine she can’t recognize in the morning. She dreams of a chamber packed so tightly with screaming, starved people and stewed so thick with suffering and anguish that she had woken up in a start, thrown up messily over the edge of her bed and choked back tears. She’d had to scrub the floor at three in the morning on a school day so that mom and dad wouldn’t see.

 

Often, it’s nothing she can put meaning to. Flashes of mundanity, cereal, tests. She was once a nurse, a warrior, a muse for a beautiful artist with equally stunning hands and lips. She doesn’t remember her past lives in detail but she feels the comforting weight of them even in her waking moments.

 

The best nights are the ones when she remembers love.

 

These dreams take so many more forms than the ones of torment do (she takes comfort in this, privately). 

 

She’s been tucked in a million times, read to, bathed, sung to when her stomach hurt and she couldn’t go to sleep. She gets flashes of a man, proud, smiling at her as she accepted a diploma. She watches her mother of that lifetime, thin and dirty and tired, secretly slide food off of her own plate onto Lexa’s when she cries that she is still hungry. She remembers the faces of thousands of her friends; some she’s even met again over her existence, in one lifetime and then another. Hugs. Bonfires. Smiling faces. A cat or two sleeping contentedly on her lap. 

 

Of course, she’s dreamed about other types of love, too. 

 

When she’s fourteen she dreams that she’s running her palms tenderly down a warm, panting torso. She dreams that she’s tonguing a nipple and scraping her teeth along the swell of a breast while the girl above her writhes and moans out her name like it’s the answer to all of her prayers. One of her hands is twisted into blonde, sweaty hair, and she shifts her hips up just so and it’s earth-shattering and the girl is making sounds that travel straight through her nerves— until she wakes with a start, flushed and throbbing and new but she understands in the way that she sometimes just understands things, remembers without ever having to have experienced herself. 

 

These dreams become more and more common as the years trudge on, always different situations and positions and outcomes, but there is one steady link. It’s almost always the same girl. She’s seen all of her, but rarely all at once—only parts (a freckle over her lip, three knuckles, the tip of her nose, knees, lower back). She does not know what this means.

 

At that point she’d started to figure out that she’s most likely completely and overwhelmingly gay, so the dreams are comforting in that aspect— she has been in her past lives, too, exclusively. It’s always girls, she’s always been a girl. She’s always a brunette with green eyes— the other is always a blonde with blue. 

 

It is something essential to her sense of self, a sense of individuality that is sometimes hard for her to reconcile with the collective weight of her existences, and it is incredibly comforting.

 

And, to be blunt, educational. 

 

Lexa has almost primarily been taught about straight sex and, even that had been just rudimental. How babies are made, how to stop boys from making one with you. She didn’t really know how two girls could be together, that they could have sex like men and women could. Her parents, she knew, found the whole idea disgusting and disagreeable and she would never even entertain the idea of asking them about anything sex-related, god forbid queer (she would like to be able to stay in her house until she finishes high school). She clears her cookies and search history with the devout intensity of someone hiding war secrets and since middle school has made up crushes on boys in her classes, but she lives for many years with the itching paranoia of being discovered every day. 

 

It’s even harder, she thinks, having the knowledge that it has almost always been like this. There are only a handful of romances throughout her countless lives that have not ended in tragedy or heartbreak. She’s been institutionalized five times, jailed four, and has been left behind by her girl more times than she can remember. She has married many men, even, either out of fear or necessity, trying to shield herself from deeper wounds. 

 

She’s been a coward so many times, forgoing truth for safety, saving lives by hardening her soul and preserving the parts of her that she cannot keep from staying soft. She’s learned these survivalist tactics over a thousand years of experience and it is hard to let go of them now. 

 

This age is bright and new and hopeful, and people like her are safer than ever before, but she has not had the good fortune of being born into a family that believes in acceptance, into a town where she is not a pariah or a caricature. She lives in the United States, in the deep, emphysemic South, and she would never admit it but she is scared and restless. Here, she is just a teenage girl who loves flowers and walks and being able to be silent for entire days at a time.

 

Her confidence and bravery and leadership ability are not desirable traits and she learns from frequent tannings in elementary school to mute them as much as she can, to become softer, more invisible. A girl who remembers her place. Crosses her ankles and lets the boys run discussions, has a mouth that’s never known curses, hands that can cook and clean.

 

On good weeks she was able to go days at at time communicating with her parents through nothing other than polite smiles and nods, yes ma’am and no sir. If she’s lucky she can get through days of school with little more than hand gestures and smiles.

 

Speaking was unsafe— she was sure that they could tell there was something wrong with her, could sense her disdain and her sorrow, and she formed words as little as was possible. 

 

She almost never answered questions in class though she had perfect grades, and she kept to herself as much as possible. The other kids are usually kind to her because she’s beautiful and unassuming and they think that this means she has a lack of confidence. 

 

She doesn’t— she’s brave, powerful, intelligent, incredibly loyal. She’s strong. Not that it matters much. She has to store these things away, until they’re useful. 

 

She knows that this would be different if she came out. They would not let her borrow pencils in class. They would not let her change in gym. She would not get asked to join groups in science. Her parents would punish her severely if she was lucky, consider her as good as dead if she wasn’t.

 

Lexa is lonely, isolated and sad, but this is not the worst. She is clean and rested and eats three meals a day. Her parents are hard on her, and their love feels fickle at best, but they don’t see her very often now that she’s busy with school. Most days can breathe. 

 

She’s lived a majority of her lives with less than that, and she will not allow herself to suffer if she does not have to (she is not scared of pain, but she is not naive enough to take it’s absence for granted). 

 

For this moment, in this lifetime, this is the Lexa she will be. Culled by swamp heat, soft as magnolia, a newspaper columnist, the quietest girl on the soccer team, pining for escape to college, screaming only into a pillow and shedding fugitive tears only under the pummeling heat of the shower stream. 

 

/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

 

She’s so careful, so delicate in all action. It comes as a complete shock that she’s been found out. 

 

That day Lexa comes in from the bus stop and she can feel the voided absence that’s been vacuumed into the heart of her home. The television (permanently on for as long as she can remember) is muted and cold. The indifference it’s screen projects, a wavered and distorted shape of Lexa across the blank screen, coats the bottom of her stomach in icy panic. 

 

She doesn’t want to go looking for them but this all feels terribly beyond her control, like she’s just an actress running through a scene she’s already memorized. She knows where they’re going to be, where her family has always handled potentially devastating news, but she still feels the need to mechanically check each room as she walks past. Maybe in one of her hundreds of other realities this has gone differently, and they were out watching a movie. Or buying groceries. Getting the oil changed in the car.

 

She knows this isn’t true even as she goes through the motions. She’d resigned herself to the doomed nature of this lifetime many years ago. 

 

Her parents are waiting for her, of course, at the dining room table, appearing calm as ever when she pokes her head in. They ask her to sit down and have a talk with them.

 

More specifically, her mother requests that ‘Alexandria’ come and speak with them. It makes her throat constrict in on itself, hard enough to ache and itch. She’s never been called that a day in her life. She’s always been Lexa to her parents, usually ‘darling’ or ‘honey’ in conversation. Alexandria is a new girl, a girl they seemed to have just met and are not very pleased with.

 

“Do you think we deserve your trust, Alexandria?” Her mother opens after a few terse moments of silence. 

 

“Yes ma’am.” She replies, head lowered in what she hopes is a sign of submission. She feels like she’s going to throw up. A light sheen of sweat is popping up over her forehead and her upper lip but she can’t risk moving and betraying it’s existence. Nerves mean guilt. Guilt means swift retribution. Godlike wrath. Punishment the like of Sodom and Gomorra. 

 

“Funny you think that. I used to, until I found out you’ve been a disgusting liar.” Her mother’s face is cold, stiff and emotionless like a set of nose and lips fashioned out of lunchmeat. Her father won’t even look at her. 

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

In that moment, before she can pass out from how lightheaded and sick she feels, Lexa experiences a strange and completely engulfing detachment. All of her dread, the queasiness in her stomach, the tremble in her lip and fingers, ceases. She feels like her body (a body that is hers, but at the same time is not) is thick and heavy and she thinks about moving it in an abstract way, like she’s feeling the contraction of someone else’s chest underneath her ear.

 

In a moment of breathless clarity, Lexa focuses over her own shoulder on the dust particles she can see swirling around her mother’s head, hit by the rays of light through the half-closed kitchen blinds. They tumble and dance around the still, unfeeling face. 

 

As her mother starts to scream Lexa hears everything through her body’s ears and then through her own, slightly muted as though the sound was passing through glass. Her mother’s mouth moved wetly as she grew angrier and red. Lexa tried to tune into the words.

 

“—those nasty websites, _completely_ unnatural, _completely_ against God and everything we hold sacred. You just don’t have any shame, do you? How would you like it if I showed your father the sites you were on? Or the girls in your class? You think they’d like to know how you think of them like some pervert? You really fucked over your chances of having friends now, huh? Who wants to be around a sicko? How are you gonna get recommendations from your teachers next year once they know you’re sick, huh? Miss university big shot right? Well, you can bet your ass your father and I won’t be paying a fucking dime for you to run off to the city and throw it around to every dyke you come across, that’s for damn sure. I—“ 

 

She tunes out when she starts to feel her chest again, though she wishes she didn’t. It feels choked and hot, a furry disgusting animal settled comfortably onto her sternum. She flexes her fingers and feels the push of her fingernails into her palms. She knows that her head turns and her father is yelling now, too, and gesturing with a small black notebook. There is a name scrawled inside the front cover as he starts to flip through it and—ah, it belongs to Lexa Woods. She knows that’s her diary, the one she kept hidden inside her mattress because between it’s pages had been the only place in her life where she could safeguard her truth, her heart. 

 

The same heart now being splayed out across the table, dissected messily, contents seeping out onto the neatly pressed table cloth. 

 

She’s filtering back into her body slowly and sways a little on the spot at the intensity of her nausea, at the rabbit-like patter of her heart, the way her eyes are struggling to focus. 

 

“—grounded indefinitely. You’re lucky we don’t put your ass on the curb for this, but your father still wants to spoil you even more. You start therapy on Saturday, and on Wednesdays and Fridays you’re going to youth group. We’re shutting off all data on your phone so calls only from this point on, and only to us.” Her mom paused, regarding Lexa full on for a moment. Her face was there but all traces of recognition were gone. Her eyes were flat.

 

“God, I can’t even look at you. Go upstairs, don’t come down until we’ve gone to bed.” She said, waving her hand dismissively. 

 

Her father reached over and held his wife’s hands, comforting her. They leave without looking back.

 

Lexa’s stomach gives a lurch that sends her scrambling for the upstairs toilet. She messily empties herself out, tears and bile and way too much emotional pain to stuff down in twenty minutes. If she’s sobbing, hiccuping and stuttering when she isn’t breathing enough, she can’t hear it. She feels the pounding pressure in her head and temples as her body mourns. She’s crying but can’t feel tears on the softness of her overheated face.

 

She lays down on the cool tile floor and tries to remember one of her stories, strokes at her own hair and wraps herself up into her own arms (her mother hasn’t hugged her in years) until she can feel the embrace of her blonde girl everywhere and the pain subsides until it doesn’t, again and again.  


/////////////////////////

 

_She’s running her fingertips over your ribs so, so gently you’re scared your heart will shatter through them. Through her touch you can feel everything that has had to go unsaid between the two of you. You can feel all her love and intention with the light scrape of a fingernail along your scapula. The soft promise of ardor and affection when the tip of her pinky weaves between the notches of your spine. You make a small sound of contentment in the back of your throat and bury face further into her neck._

 

_“You feel so thin. When’s the last time you ate a full meal, huh?” She breathes into your skin. You turn slightly and place a gentle kiss to the subtle divot of her chin._

 

_“I’m eating fine, Clarke.”_

 

_“How often?”_

 

_“…”_

 

_“Lexa. How often?”_

 

 _“Whenever I can,” you answer honestly. She frowns, tightening her grip around you as if the thought of empty plates threatens the soft, blank quiet the two of you had made sure was to be undisturbed tonight. You’re wrapped together in a pile of sheets and pillows pilfered from the rest of the house into her attic, a wood-grey and often drafty vaulted room bigger than your entire dorm at the orphanage._

 

_You’ve known Clarke for little over a year now and you’ve never questioned the sincerity of her generousness. You don’t much like to dwell on where you would be and what you would be doing if Clarke hadn’t helped you one of the countless times she has in the past. Inviting you over for dinner as many times as could be appropriate in a week, sleepovers as frequently as possible, some of her nicest dresses passed into your hands because “It doesn’t fit right on me” or “I have so many already,” school supplies magically appearing in your bag whenever you thought you might be on the verge of going without, a pair of new shoes on every birthday. Even something as little as sneaking a bundle of sandwiches away from her cook when neither you or your friends had managed to eat lunch caught your heart in your throat as you struggled with the immensity of your affection._

 

 _You know from all of those times, and from ones like this, that you are in deeply in love with Clarke. You know from your dreams and your senses and the feeling in the back of your throat and in your blood that you have always been deeply in love with Clarke, as far back as things may go. As long as there have been people at the very least, and probably longer. You know she loves you too, though the two of you dare not speak the words unless privacy is assured._

 

 _It makes it more special, you think, the lack of words. When you say them they feel infinitely powerful, weighted down with the gravity of two pairs of hands, two spines, two beating hearts.  
You don’t have to babble to each other like the other lovesick teenage couples you see, you don’t have to make eyes at one another in school or carry Clarke’s books or lend her your coat to let her know that you love her. The world wasn’t ready for your love— you know what happens to people like you if they get caught, you’ve seen what happens to people who get sent to asylums, and it haunts every kiss. The world wasn’t ready but that did not prevent you from being in love, hadn’t prevented the two of you from being together for a hundred lifetimes before this one._

 

 _For now this is enough. This swirling peace, the soothing weight of her naked from pressed into you, her soft breath against the delicate swirl of your collarbones. Tonight it can’t matter that you might be a bit too thin because you keep passing off your lunches and breakfasts to younger children. It doesn’t matter that you have no family, or that her father is only a few weeks buried in the ground. It doesn’t matter that the consequences of the door coming unlocked and someone walking in on the inexcusable state of your sated bodies would likely end the both of your lives as you know them and certainly end the time you would have to spend together in this life._

 

 _Tonight, Clarke’s nice dress and underthings are mixed together with your dingy secondhand ones across the floor. Tonight her mother is nursing her grief at some socialite function in midtown and is not expected home until early the next morning at earliest. Tonight her breath is the only thing you will be looking out for, her hand tangled in yours the greatest tether you feel._

//////////////////////

 

The therapy, if you can really call it that, is the hardest part for her. She constructed a sturdy and efficient wall of routine and caution surrounding this Saturday morning ritual. 

 

Up at least two hours before her parents so that she could shower and change without the threat of meeting one of them in the hallway. She would put her usually untamed hair into a neat french braid, change into one of the tops her mother used to buy her for Christmas that she hated, pull on her most conservative pair of shorts or skirt, quietly find a book to read down in the loveseat while her parents moved about the house. They don’t speak to her unless it’s absolutely necessary anymore, and that is usually on Saturday mornings as they pack into the car for their drive to Lake Charles, for Lexa’s conversion therapy sessions. 

 

She sits in the backseat with her hands folded politely in her lap, earbuds out because if her mother had to repeat herself Lexa might as well consider herself grounded from listening to music or reading anyways. Her mom will ask her if she’s keeping her grades up (she always is), if she’s made much progress in therapy (she never has but she always lies and says that the doctor thinks she is certainly working towards recovery). 

 

“We have a group session after your individual, so don’t make yourself too comfortable,” her mother says to her this time. Their eyes catch in the rear-view mirror and she has to look away. 

 

“Yes ma’am.” 

 

“I expect to hear you’ve been making progress, like you’ve said. Because if the doctor says that you haven’t then that would be another lie on your part, Alexandria.”

 

“Yes ma’am,” Lexa says as she shifts her eyes into her lap, stomach flipping uncomfortably. She knows for a fact that she has not been making progress in her sessions with the good doctor. Every time so far has been the same; recounting some ‘deeply buried’ childhood trauma, discussing why she viewed boys in a sexually negative manner (“Did a young man reject you in middle school, Alexandria?”), dissecting her ‘unhealthy dependency’ on her mother from which stems her confusion in sexual attachment (“Do you feel that you have a focus on breasts?”). She answers honestly each time she is asked, because she cannot find it within her to lie after hundreds of lifetimes of dishonesty. No consequence seems worth it, in the long scheme of things.

 

It’s the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make today easier, and it won’t make tomorrow easier, or the day after that. It is hard. Her mother looks at her like a thing she desperately wants gone, like a roach or mold. Her father hasn’t spoken more than a few words to her, held prolonged eye contact with her, since the day they found out.

 

 _It’s hard._

 

Her session that day is long and Dr. Glass spends most of it attempting to explain ways through which she can learn to sever her unnatural psychological urges. Focusing on the positive qualities of the boys she knows. Attempting to connect her feelings for feminine traits to masculine ones. She tries her hardest and, as always, answers as honestly as possible, but every note the good doctor scribbles down feels like getting docked points on a project she didn’t have a rubric for. 

 

“So, Lexa, let me switch direction here for a bit. How would you say your progress in therapy has been so far?” 

 

She shifts in her seat a little, uncomfortable by this direct line of inquiry. 

 

“Well, sir, I feel like I have been making progress every session.” 

 

“Do you really?” His voice is smug on the edges, and it cuts at her. 

 

“I…I do, I—“ 

 

It’s at that moment when her parents choose (though, really, this was probably set up long before) to make their entrance. They sit in the two chairs on either side of her, closing her in. The gesture is far from comforting, and she starts to feel the first tinges of panic settle onto her  
breastbone. 

 

“Lexa, your parents and I are concerned about the lack of success I’ve been observing throughout our time together. You seem, psychologically, resistant to all the methods of therapy that we know to work well in an outpatient setting. Now, I’ve been discussing some alternate treatments with your parents, and the three of us have come to the conclusion that cases like yours are best dealt with in an inpatient, intensive therapeutic environment.” He states pedantically, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose every few seconds in a sort of tic. She stares back at the expectant gazes on her for a few seconds.

 

“I don’t understand. Am I being committed to a hospital?”

 

“Not in a technical sense. It’s more of a…camp. You’ll get to have fun, make friends, relax a little, but you’ll also be benefitting from a few hours of therapy a day, on top of group sessions and camp exercises. The success rates of this camp are very high, and the facilities are top-notch. After spending your summer here I feel the benefits will be enormous. You could very feasibly walk away from this completely cured, or at the very least well on your way to a full recovery.”

 

Her parents are nodding seriously, after the doctor finishes speaking, and she’s geared up to ask more questions (because what the fuck does any of that even mean?) before her dad jumps in and starts asking about some discount that they’d been promised. Lexa, leaning back in her chair and disconnecting from the sounds around her a bit, realizes in an instant that she isn’t being asked if she _wants_ to go— she’s just being given the information on where she _will_ be going, as a sort of courtesy. 

 

She doesn’t have time to process much.

 

It feels like she is still sitting down in that faux-leather office chair when she breathes and realizes she is already in the backseat of her father’s truck. He’s playing the gospel station so loudly you couldn’t speak over it if you tried. He’s having a quiet discussion with her mother in the front. 

 

The drive home takes less than her few measured blinks (she’s watching them from outside again, breathes over the delicate freckles that dust her eyelids) and when they’ve pulled up into the driveway her mother turns half-way to tell her to start packing her bags, because she’s leaving tomorrow afternoon.

 

She sits on her bed for a long, long while, until there isn’t any sunlight left and her room is lit only by the streetlamp across the street, thinking nothing. She focuses on evening out her breathing until she’s lulled by the rhythmic stutter.

 

For the first time in her life Lexa falls into dreamless slumber.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did some editing on chapter one to make it flow a bit better with this--
> 
> Also all the info I got on Salem-era religion and politics came from Wikipedia, so, probably not the most accurate but whatever it's fan fiction.
> 
> Octavia Blake needed to be in here more because why not she's A+
> 
> //////////////////

_Clarke’s mouth is the sweetest sin you’ve ever known._

 

_You have her pressed up against the backside of the Montgomery’s barn, bristling and splinter -full as it is, the basket of berries that the two of you have successfully pilfered from the green loam outside the fields thrown to the ground between your feet. It’s sweltering out, and you’ll have to refill the basket before you can come back home, but for now you’ve stolen a few hours of precious alone time with the girl you love and you’re determined to use it accordingly._

 

_“You know,” she pants against your neck, “if anyone finds us here we will surely be tried. And executed. They will think us witches.”_

 

_“Most certainly,” you say, tugging at her earlobe with the very edges of your teeth. She makes a sharp, short sound that tugs all the way down your spine with hot little hands._

 

_“And this seemingly does not bother you, Lexa…?” Clarke mumbles before returning a kiss of her own. You’re distracted by it for a few seconds before you shrug, pulling away for a breath. Her hair is messy rays, escaping from her braid, and her face (your favorite face in every instance of life) is flushed and pulled into the softest expression._

 

_“You know as well as I do that this is far from the end. If we are killed for our love, well, then, that cannot be helped. We will be reborn, we will find each other once more, as we have for thousands of years. We need not be afraid of death, Clarke.” You breathe as much reverence and affection as possible into these words— she needs to hear them often, to remember. Some lifetimes she forgets entirely. You have always been the one who dreams of your collective past, have always been the one who remembers and reminds and protects._

 

_“If either of us could be spared from the stake it would be you. You are the daughter of the Deacon. They would look for any excuse to save you. I, on the other hand, am just a farmer’s daughter. They’d probably say I bewitched you, seduced you…” she chuckles lowly. You smirk, drawing your hand around to play with a fastening on her dress._

 

_“Would that not be accurate?” You say playfully, batting your eyelashes at her. “Poor, quiet little Lizbeth Wilder, tempted into sin by that blonde harlot…” You pause, trying to think. “What exactly is the ridiculous name you have this lifetime? I keep forgetting.”_

 

_She snorts, pecking you on the lips. “ Clarice. Clarke is not a name becoming of a young woman in this day and age, you know.”_

 

_“Right. Tempted into sin by that blonde harlot, Clarice Goodman. Lamb led astray, prodigal child, bewitched by that immodest jezebel…”_

 

_“And her amazing breasts.”_

 

_“Very, very much bewitched by her amazing breasts.”_

 

_The two of you laugh into more kisses, sweet this time, ardor set aside for a soft fondness that breathes in between your skin and your words. The breeze coming off from the fields to your left is soothing and gentle as it whistles through all the layers convention requires of you. You will be glad to leave this era behind— the stifling blanket of puritanism is a woolen monster. It does not breathe or bend for anyone and you itch all the time for a better way._

 

_There is one caveat to your time here— you and Clarke are together, she remembers your collective past, and it is not considered odd for two chaste, unmarried young women to spend hours alone with one another, completing their household chores and avoiding young men._

 

_You and Clarke run away together for hours you fantasize are years. The hayloft, the field with the biggest tree, the river bank, your attic sometimes. The field is your favorite, far and away, yellow and green like the color of her words, because it is the only place you’ve ever caught even a lungful of air untainted by declarations of sin and evil and righteousness. You’ve always had a love affair with flowers so Clarke will spend warm, silent hours twisting chains of them for the both of your heads or twining them up in your braids. She has a talent for sketching, and you for patience, so you’ve spent many afternoons after chores and lessons perched on some log or stone, giddy with having her undivided attention, her eyes scanning you like something priceless and indescribable._

 

_It’s a beautiful, safe time while it lasts. You fall, impossibly, more into love with her between the field and the farm and the chapel._

 

////////////////////////////////////////////

 

“Do you have anything to share with the group today, Lexa?”

 

“…” 

 

“If you want to earn your points for the day you have to share with us, Lexa. Don’t take advantage of the safe space the others have granted you by keeping quiet. Everyone else has gone to vulnerable places here. We’re here to support you through this journey. But we can only do that if you’re willing to put in effort of your own.”

 

“…” 

 

The councilor, a fatter, beige-spotted woman with a cobweb hairdo and long jean shorts was supposed to be called Mrs. Maple, like the tree. She used to like girls, too, before she went here. Now she’s in a devoted relationship with Jesus, Mr. Maple, and microwaveable frozen appetizers. She works with troubled teens headed down the Wrong Path out of a warped and mislead compassion for them. She was nice enough, but she took her low-paying job as the savior of young souls too seriously. She always wanted the girls in her groups to talk about how traumatized they were as children and how stunted and ingrown they were in society, how they were choosing not to follow God’s path or Nature’s laws, etcetera.

 

Crying would usually deter her, a few found out early on (it made her uncomfortable, her face would quiver) but something about Lexa’s placid, resigned silence seemed to really grind her gears. She would spend at least six or seven minutes of every group session trying to force her into discussion. Lexa would just stare and stare and pick at her nail beds and avoid every eye in the room. Sometimes when she looked at Mrs. Maple the poor woman would get wound up, start to go for a big finish on whatever point she was trying to hammer into the freckled stoic, and the girl would just breath out, very evenly, watching. She was often issued demerits for this, for the breathing. 

 

///////////////////////

 

The first week is seemingly unbearable.

 

Her parents had unloaded her from the truck with the sentimentality of a UPS drop-off— her mother had handed her her suitcase, looked her directly in the eyes, and said “This is your last chance. If you don’t graduate from this camp, we have no other choice but to exclude you from this family.” Her father said nothing, fiddling with his phone in the driver’s seat.

 

She didn’t cry. She was expecting as much. 

 

She swallowed her hurt and allowed herself to be borne along the various administrative steps, the sorting into her cabin. All the girls awkwardly milled around the tree out front of the brown wood building, a structure that looked to Lexa exactly as a camp cabin would be expected to. Inside was not much different— rows of bunks with a unclothed green plastic mattress, a bedside table and trunk the fixings for each. 

 

They unpacked in relative silence, only a few girls comfortable enough to try and chat with each other— the rest knew that it was only a matter of time before camaraderie was essentially useless, when their eyes and smiles and friendly touches could become venomous. 

 

The routine followed tightly and efficiently— morning prayers, washing up, filing into the dining hall, prayers, breakfast. After that, each cabin was assigned either an activity or it’s members sent for individual sessions, then they would switch. The sun climbed higher over the trees, campers filing into the dining hall, prayers, evening group therapy, then bible study and prayers with the camp director, filing back to the showers, washing up, prayers, bed. 

 

Here, Lexa’s defensive silence was not the charming shyness of her high school.

 

They all hated her even more here than they ever did back home. Back in Elizabeth she was perfume in the hallway, a hair tie left behind on a desk, a graded assignment crumpled in the trash. There, but, never truly. She survived there in her trembling, quiet way. Inside of the stuffy little cabin she was the ultimate threat. Possessed with a surety of self that was held with an unshakeable determination. She was not desperate, not yet, and this made her dangerous, a threat to the terrified girls determined to convince their parents (and themselves) that treatment was working.

 

As such, she was avoided like a hacking cough and left out of almost everything that was optional. She sat by herself at lunch and put in the minimally required effort of the group building activities and games they were cheerily pushed into playing with the other cabins. That often involved her standing somewhere in the general vicinity and sulking, attempting to avoid sunburn and bug bites with little success. When a ball comes rolling over to her, or a sheet of paper is passed to her, she tries her hardest to chameleon herself into the weeds or the baseboard.

 

But things change. 

 

It probably isn’t smart, and it definitely is not going to lead to her graduation from Helping Hands, but she is so tired of pretending. She’d made a promise to herself that first night, wiping away errant tears in the blue heat quiet of her bunk, that she would no longer hurt herself for the pleasure of others. 

 

////////////

 

Here, in this sad semi-circle of plastic chairs inside the cleared cafeteria-slash-theraputic environment, she sat blank as a piece of particle board, swinging her sneakered feet, ignoring ignoring ignoring everything like television static. It’s her new tactic, her hastily erected last line of defense for the mosquitos and the psalms and the beans that seem to be present at every meal she is required to pray for. 

 

Before Mrs. Maple can continue with whatever it is she is saying, the front doors crash open and Mr. David, the camp’s director, steps into the room with a clipboard covering a good portion of his face. He’s wearing baggy jean shorts belted around his Helping Hands teeshirt, white socks pulled up around calves rubbed bare from a lifetime of wearing pants. There’s a girl standing behind him, almost entirely concealed, clearly trying to make herself as unnoticeable as possible. Lexa feels a flash of sympathy for her— starting off from day one has been hard enough, getting thrown in days after everyone has just started to get the hang of things is draconian. 

 

“What can we do you for, Mr. David?”

 

He rifles through his clipboard for a second, adjusting his ugly hunting sunglasses and mumbling. As if thumbing through some extensive and unorganized archive, and not a collection of perhaps eight or nine loose sheets of paper.

 

“Hello there Mrs. Maple. I’m just dropping off this young lady here— her flight got delayed, she had to stay behind a few days. She’s gonna be in your cabin.” He says to the clipboard before turning a little to unveil his charge.

 

“Why don’t you introduce yourself to the group, Miss Griffin?”

 

Lexa feels, in that moment, a stunning sense of rightness that, even over her many lifetimes, she has never experienced. 

 

The sun takes its chance to filter down through the girl’s blonde hair, to light up her eyes from the back outwards, to spread itself over her honeyed shoulders and slant across the gentle line of her neck.

 

It’s her. It’s Clarke.

 

She can’t seem breathe again but this time the sensation is more like the moment before fireworks, or when you rip open presents on Christmas. This breathlessness is stunningly weightless. 

 

“Uh, hi, everyone. I’m Clarke Griffin, I’m here from DC, I’m gonna be senior this year…” she trails off. It takes you briefly off-guard, but you know that she is unsure of what is appropriate to be said in this situation, and trying to make this as comfortable as possible for all the people involved. She’s kind. She’s good at talking to adults. You know her, which is strange, considering that the two of you have never technically met. 

 

“Well Clarke, we’re glad to have you in the group, aren’t we girls?” Mrs. Maple cuts in, gesturing for their little circle of trust to nod. 

 

The required murmurs of sympathy ring through the circle. Lexa tries to make some kind of indication of support, a shift or possibly a grunt in the affirmative, but everything is still rigid in shock. Maybe she’s adjusting to the stretch of an entirely new life fit into this one moment. Maybe she’s just fucking nervous because Clarke is _so fucking hot_ it is making the entire room seem closer around Lexa’s shoulders.

 

Mrs. Maple starts to go into some introductory bullshit that Lexa tunes out immediately once she realizes that something has caught Clarke’s eye (there isn’t a little ripple of jealousy when it’s not her, she’s convinced). She’s staring at somebody in the curve of the circle, and the corner of her mouth with the kissable little mark twitches upwards in something akin to a grin. 

 

Lexa attempts to follow her line of sight, forcing her into making awkward eye contact with one of the only other girls in the cabin she knows believes in the ‘treatment’ here as little as she herself does— Octavia Blake.

 

Sexy, aggressive, fit-as-fuck, permanently on restricted privileges for debauching other girls Octavia Blake. 

Octavia Blake who was sent here by her foster parents and unafraid to let everyone know that she does not care if she completes the program or not, because her brother is currently fighting and winning custody of her over from the courts, and she’ll be “out of here before you can give me another fucking ‘demerit,’ you disgusting fucking people.” 

 

Was Clarke interested in her? It wouldn’t be a surprise. 

 

Lexa feels her throat constrict— it’s happened before, in other lifetimes. Just being soulmates did not mean enough, always. 

 

Sometimes Lexa wasn’t right for her, in whatever form she was in. Sometimes she was too late or too early, sometimes Clarke’s heart had already found enough peace with another that Lexa couldn’t bear to cause upheaval in her life. The thought of this sends a tinge of panic into Lexa’s stomach. 

 

“So, Clarke, why don’t you take the open seat next to Alexandria over here and just listen in. We’ll get you acclimated to the group sessions tomorrow, ok?” Mrs. Maple says, loud enough to jolt Lexa out of her worried, stuffy cloud. Clarke nods politely, offers a little smile in Lexa’s direction. Her heart stutters and swoons but pain fights its way through— it was not a familiar smile. It was a social grace, an offering of comfort to a complete stranger. The spark of recognition Lexa found herself praying for did not pop into Clarke’s blue, blue eyes. 

 

////////////

 

The rest of the session goes by without incident— the other girls air their insecurities, their fears, their most festering secrets, and Mrs. Maple ‘helps’ them (“Well, Charlotte, perhaps you felt the need to seek out this other young woman because you were attempting to find the love you feel your own mother fails to give you, hm?”) before moving on to the next girl, fishing for input from the others at times. It’s how they got them to turn against one another, how they destroyed the possibility of a united front. Picking a girl apart to her face, trying to win favor so that next time, maybe, Mrs. Maple would choose to skip over her. Lexa’s silence protected her from this.

 

Which means she has plenty of time to kill.

 

She can’t help but notice how Clarke is noticing her. She can feel the weight of her gaze, the sweep, the observation. Her immediate response, the gut-fear she associates with being noticed like that, is pushed aside in favor of the new glow of of something warm and unrecognized in her chest.

 

She likes that Clarke is looking at her, searching her for something Lexa isn’t sure she is able to give. She likes the feeling of wanting this, of wanting to give Clarke whatever it is that she wants from her, of taking whatever Clarke can offer. 

 

She likes it but she knows, she’s been taught, that what she desires and what is right to do are usually entirely separate things. 

 

Lexa recognizes a good majority of the ‘therapy’ she’s received throughout her life has been complete and outright lies— she recognizes this but it is so hard to internalize that it is true. Her logical mind is what keeps her quiet, what keeps her hidden and safe from the prodding of the councilors. It’s what has her scribbling her thoughts down in the journal she managed to save from her house, what keeps her truth confined but breathing. But the self she had grown into, the Lexa that Mom and Dad and Elizabeth had molded, the Lexa that would never truly leave her childhood bedroom, could not believe that Clarke was interested in her. This Lexa was the damage she had spent so long convincing herself she was spared from. She couldn’t remember a time where she had ever felt comfortable with herself, with the space she occupied. She had always been…disappointing, no matter how much of personality she cut away to make room for what her mother and father wanted. Never quite normal. Always difficult for her parents. She stopped dreaming about the possibilities her life had to offer because they stopped seeming real. She has no history in futures— she’s always been looped up in the past, bound to the decisions and fates of her previous lives.

 

Lexa tries her very best (and determination is a strong suit of hers) to keep eyes off of Clarke as they trudge off towards the rec center for the final (and most arduous) event of the day— the camp-wide bible study and prayers with Mr. David. This was the only time of the day she ever saw the boys’ cabins, which seemed counterintuitive to the purpose of conversion therapy camp, but, Lexa wasn’t inclined to question the logic of an institution that touted the idea that you would get sent to hell “twice over” for touching yourself to thoughts of another girl. 

 

And— she really shouldn’t be thinking of touching herself right now, while she unconsciously strains her neck around the camper in front of her for a blissfully unobstructed view of Clarke, strolling languidly along in a pair of shorts that were so short Lexa is frankly shocked admin didn’t make her change immediately. Not that she’s complaining— the long, tanned legs stretching out from them give her the familiar feeling of nostalgia she associates with some sort of past memory. She must have worn denim just as well in some far-away memory. The white tank top paired with them isn’t much better, and the way the neckline dips combined with the swatch of lower back left bare as it bunches up is becoming a problem for Lexa. Her skin prickles with heat that was not so pressing a minute ago.

 

“I’m disappointed. Jesus is watching, Lexa, and unlike you he does _not_ like what he sees.”

 

Lexa startles hard enough to run into another girl from their cabin, wincing out a short apology in response to her glare before turning to her left, where Octavia Blake is honest to God _smirking_ at her. Who smirks outside of television shows?

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Ah, she speaks. I can’t help but notice that your eyes are practically glued to Clarke Griffin’s magnificent ass, and I thought you’d appreciate knowing that it feels every bit as perfect as it looks.”

 

Lexa can’t help but balk at this, blinking once, twice, three times before her brain remembers her powers of speech. 

 

“You…know Clarke?” This time a smile, wide and friendly, slides across Octavia’s face.They’re settling onto the floor now, a well-worn bible placed in front of them by a haggard councilor from the boys cabins. Her’s has been opened and shut so many times the black veneer has turned grayish and frayed. Clarke is somewhere far to the right, hardly visible in the dim lighting of the low, log-built room trussed up with faded motivational posters and biblical passage posters made in arts and crafts.

 

“I more than know her. See, my psychotic mom locked me in our basement for sixteen years right?” Lexa nods dumbly, unsure if Octavia is being serious or not, but she keeps going without a hitch. “Well, once all the shit went down with that and I got put into foster care, the home I was sent to just happened to be in Clarke’s ritzy, WASP-hive of a neighborhood. Blah blah blah, time goes by, we get close, and one day, on a wild hare really, I suggest, “Hey, do you wanna make out?” And obviously she’s like, “Duh.” So. We’re sitting on her bed, I’ve got my hand up her shirt, and—“ Whatever Octavia has to say next gets cut off by the spidering freeze of static from the microphone being set up by Mr. David, and she whispers that they’ll continue this conversation later. 

 

Lexa nods like she understands, but really she’s just trying to fully process all the information that has just been thrown at her in Octavia’s jovial, break-neck pace. She’s still reeling with the fact that Octavia approached and spoke to her with seemingly such little reservation (and, if she’s being transparently honest, the mental images floating around of Clarke and Octavia…aren’t exactly helping her problem from earlier). 

 

She doesn’t hear a single word of the bible lesson, and by the time the prayers start it’s only Octavia’s sharp elbow catching her in the side that gets her head down in time to avoid chastisement.

 

Not before she catches onto the hook of the bluest eyes that she knows so intimately, knows as well as her own. 

 

Not before she sees the wink and the small smile Clarke sends her way before bowing her own head in synthesized prayer. 

 

The words ring up all along the walls, thrum up through the floor, but Lexa is immune to their thrum for the first time in her entire life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long and it's short I just started college and I suck as a person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll finish this I swear, but it's gonna be really annoying and take forever and y'all are going to hate me. But it'll get done hopefully by the end of this year.

Mason curls up around her, wraps an arm over her shoulders, breathes into her hair. Lexa wants to squirm away. She wants nothing to do with touching him. 

 

That isn’t what girlfriends do, though, and Lexa is as committed to pulling off this act flawlessly as she is any other aspect of her Straight career, so she steels her nerves and snuggles further into his warmth. When she catches his wide, trusting, puppy-dog face she feels so guilty she has to look away sometimes. 

 

Lexa had chosen him strategically at the end of the last semester to keep her parents happy and hopefully clueless for a little while. His mom worked with her mom at the elementary school attendance office and she thought he was a good boy. He was, really. Sweet enough, quiet, really attentive and caring. He was the type of boy who wore wire-rimmed, rectangular glasses and Converse. He dressed like a Kid’s Gap ad and went to church with his family on Sunday’s. He played baseball and liked video games and World War Two historical documentaries on the History channel. He wanted to be a veterinarian. She said yes when he asked her out, all fumbling and awkward and patchy where he didn’t shave well, because she knew that he was safe and too immature to want to fuck her just yet, so an easy three or four month ‘relationship’ with some occasional kissing would probably rock his world and keep her in the clear. He asks Lexa out during homeroom, on a Friday.

 

“Hey, what’s up?” He’d blurted, awkwardly standing by her desk as she gathered her things up. She knew what he was going to do because she had been the one allowing the idea to germinate within him for weeks at that point. She tended the budding shoot diligently, with well-timed looks and questions and just enough laughter at his jokes.

“Y’know, just, leaving homeroom. Same as you.” She drawled, meandering out of the room as he followed in suit, trying to match what she was so sure to him appeared to be a perfectly content and relaxed atmosphere. Lexa had been running through this scenario in her head for the last few days, trying to perfect what to say to get him to ask her out on a date (rule number one— straight girls don’t ask their boyfriends out on dates).  

“Yeah, yeah, right. So. I was wondering, uh, if maybe you didn’t have any plans this Saturday…” He visibly gained confidence as he took in her perfectly gentle smile, the open way she was looking at him. “Maybe you’d want to go out with me? See a movie? Or something.” 

Lexa didn’t want to see a movie with Mason on Saturday. She wanted to read, watch shitty movies, catch up on her homework, and generally fall into a near-vegetative state before her parents came home from work and she would have to lock herself upstairs to preserve the peace. She wanted (needed at this point) to decompress from her day-to-day life of method acting.

 

“I’d love to. What time are you thinking? My parents are pretty strict on curfew.” She said instead.

 

As they hashed over the details of the date, and he left Lexa with a sincere smile and the sunniness of someone who’s gotten exactly what they wanted, she felt the part of herself she kept secreted away, the part that was immune to damage, the shock-resistant part, sink and churn. When she got home that night she cried in the shower, but, like she had a hundred times before, Lexa emerged cocooned in safety. In numbness. Cotton and cloud. The pattern of her breathing spelled out this is just temporary hurt. She had been dealing with this quiet ache for years— she could handle a few more months.

 

The dates weren’t nearly as bad as they had the potential to be— quite small talk, very safe topics, always food to eat or a movie to watch to keep a safe distance between the two of them. When he wrapped his arm around her shoulders Lexa tried as hard as she did with everything to feel what she was supposed to. She focused intently on him around her— unyielding boy arms, baggy hoodie, the smell of aftershave and deodorant that he must have spared no expense in using before he picked her up for the movie. She imagined herself feeling safe and protected by those arms. She sat still and breathed evenly and forced herself to relax against him.

 

This is ok, she repeated over and over. 

 

Rationally, she knew that there was nothing wrong with her. She had researched and read and watched enough to know that she was not diseased or confused, but logic and rationale are hard to tend to when day-to-day life is telling you the opposite.

 

Lexa knew that she shouldn’t want to, but she was hoping Mason would be gentle and kind enough to make her like him. Or, at least, make it easy to pretend to. So she tried, every time he touched her, to focus on the feeling, to tell herself that she enjoyed it, to lean further into the embrace. After one particularly affectionate date (his hand on her knee earned a shudder that she tried to pretend was a stretch) he stopped her a few houses down as they were walking back to her place after the movie. When he turned to Lexa she immediately understood what he was going to do— she could feel it in his palms, laying where they claimed her shoulders. The kiss was short and dry and mostly made of eyelashes and stubble. His lips were thin and rough and not at all what she’d imagined her first kiss would be like, what the kisses she remembered with the blonde girl and other girls were like, and a weird quivery breath, the kind that prefaces crying, started to wind itself up inside of her.

 

“Hey. Are you ok? I’m sorry, I thought you wanted me to.” He said, jumbled and embarrassed and raising his eyebrows and hands all around. She schooled her features carefully, scaffolded her lungs back into work before she propped up what she hoped was a convincing enough smile. 

 

“Oh, no, I’m fine. It was fine. I’m just a little cold.” This satisfied him. After a minute or two more of plans for another date that he orchestrated, Lexa crept into the house feeling lousy and spent. She had hoped that her parents would be too engrossed in their shows to hear her come in, and that she could retreat back to her room and work on recovering from the date.

 

“How was the date, darlin’?” Lexa’s mother called from the living room, muting the tv. Her voice was excited and Lexa could hear her steps as she came to see her in the entry way. The smile she had on was wide and toothy and unfortunately genuine, forcing a complex, fuzzy mixture of guilt and disgust to clog up Lexa’s airway and she smiled a bit to buy herself time before answering.

 

This had become a nightly routine with he parents. They would be so fucking proud and ecstatic to ask her everything they could about Mason, to give her firm parental advice about not letting him touch her until they got married, about being nice to his mom and dad and older brother when she went over to his house, about what dress she should wear when we went to prom. They finally felt that they could connect with her through this visage. The smokescreen of her implied heterosexuality allowed her parents to see her as the daughter they deserved, and Lexa would be lying if she said she didn’t love how much easier this made every second of her life. 

 

“Oh, it was great. Good movie.” She said nervously, shuffling a little in place. Her mother caught something then.

 

“Did Mason try something with you? You seem upset, honey.”

 

“No, m’am. Upset? I’m fine. Just a little shaky, I didn’t eat anything so that’s probably why I seem a little off.” She babbled, trying to edge her way into the kitchen.

 

“If he tried to touch you I’ll have his daddy on the phone faster than you can say the words, darlin’.” My dad piped up from his place in the living room.

 

“No! No it was nothing like that, I—“

 

“Lexa! You’re red as a pepper! Did—“ Then she gasped, and the look on her face pierced straight through Lexa’s ribs, right through her lung, up into her heart. Her mother was so excited, so hopeful it stung to breathe.

 

“Did you just get your first kiss? Oh, honey, that’s so wonderful! How was it!?” There it was. Lexa’s stomach rolled in on itself and the pressure of her tears hurt and throbbed in her sinuses. She wouldn’t be reacting this way if it had been a kiss Lexa had actually wanted. If Lexa came through the door, flushed and brilliant after a date with, say, her blonde, or the lovely redheaded girl in the front row of her government class. Her mother would be ashen and silent as Lexa described the dress the girl wore and the nervous brush of their hands over an armrest. She would be physically repelled, disgusted, if Lexa gushed over the sweet press of their lips, full and blushing, the little giggle as they adjusted for the space of their noses. She would send her to get psychiatric help at the private clinic in Baton Rogue that had taken it’s place as Lexa’s most overwhelming, real-life terror. 

 

“Yeah,” Lexa said shakily, tugging up her mouth like a smile, “I did, actually. It was perfect.”

 

She threw up three times that night and let the highest heat in the shower burn down her skin, all over. It was no baptism, no matter how hard she tried to feel absolved. The stain went past the malleable cells of her skin.

——————————————————————————————————————————

 

Lexa lays awake until the earliest, coolest hours of the morning trying to distinguish Clarke’s rhythm from the soft breathing around her in every direction. It’s intoxicating, knowing that she’s nearby, knowing that they had shared… _something_ , ineffable and timid, but _something_ nonetheless earlier. There was a tether now, thin as gossamer, wrapping between her fingers, between Clarke’s.

 

It’s strange for her, trying to integrate what she can surmise of this Clarke with her network of memories about the girl’s past. 

 

Is she the piss-and-vinegar idealist Lexa had stumbled into in that muggy, chaotic New York, 1963? Tirelessly working between medical school, organizing protests, and crawling into her loft at night to slosh around in paint and canvas? Golden hair wild around her, soft billowy dresses, camphor, paint thinner. An easy, languid sexuality that the change in morality allowed to develop for the first time. 

 

The outgoing, enthusiastic young nurse trying to make a difference with each tragic young man she saved? Braced with a steely, unwavering determination to be better, to do better, to make a difference? Digging out bullets and shrapnel and living as a last tether to the land of the living, and yet still offering warm arms and soft words to Lexa when she came home at night? Crying into starched uniform sleeves, poppies everywhere, so much snow.

 

Or is she the tired, world-weary girl swarmed by so much suffering, eyes hollowed out and limbs placid in the wake of tragedies Lexa can’t even remember across the stretch of hundreds of years? The girl that needed Lexa to remind her to eat her meals and wash up and breathe when she was gripped by her nightmares? A haunted house taking up the space inside of her.

 

Where was she, in this life?

 

Lexa turns on to her back, staring at the ceiling instead of the very top of the blanketed lump that she knew to be Clarke, five beds over. She had looked so put together, been so pleasant and social that none of the other girls seemed to think that she needed any words of comfort as she settled in. They’d all left her alone after they’d gotten back from the showers, let her make up her bed and fold her clothes away with the background noise of soft chatter until the councilor came in from her separate room to lead them through their nightly prayers. 

 

(This was always Lexa’s least favorite part of the day— it smarted with memories of her childhood, the warmth, white floral patterned sheets, muted light from the hallway, the hugs her mother would give her, the smell of her father’s cologne. Betrayal of the most biblical order. She’s a first child, not a second son.)

 

She doesn’t know if Clarke cried that night, if she mourned for the loss of her security, her family, her childhood. She doesn’t know how long (if at all) Clarke lay sleepless and miserable and alone. It isn’t her place yet to pad across the splintery wooden floor. She doesn’t know her well enough to slide between her sheets into the space Clarke has made with her body. They aren’t close enough yet for Lexa to hold Clarke so tightly against her chest, hands pressing against her back to remind her to breathe while she choked and sputtered. 

 

She was embroiled in her own struggle.

 

She fought against sleep for as long as possible because she didn’t want to start muddling Her Clarke with the Clarke she’s known. She wants all her discoveries to be authentic, to be organic. She wants to know about her friends from school, her first kiss, her favorite breakfasts, everything and anything that makes her Clarke so unique from all the lives she’s lived before. The dreams would just serve to confuse her, to start mixing lifetimes together, and Lexa resists as long as she is able. 

 

She doesn’t win for long. She never does. 

—————————————————————————————————————————

 

“You’re so gay I’m surprised you haven’t spontaneously burst into a moping pile of plaid and Tegan and Sara merchandise.”

 

“Perpetuating these stereotypes is harmful, Octavia.”

 

“…You are _so gay_ that I’d be willing to bet you’re ready to U-Haul it with Clarke before you’ve even had a full conversation.”

 

“Octavia.”

 

“You are so gay that _literal_ megabytes of your phone storage is probably dedicated to sultry pictures of half-dressed Kristen Stewart. And maybe a few kittens. And a German Shepard.”

 

“Octavia.”

 

“Home Depot.” 

 

“Are you quite finished?”

 

“Ok, ok, fine. No sense of humor.”

 

“Need I remind you that, between the two of us, you are the only one who’s slept with another girl, and the one with the back of your head shaved. And you like motorcycles.” 

 

“What happened to stereotypes being harmful? Anyways, I’m probably bisexual, so, the same imagery need not apply.”

 

Lexa huffs and turns away from her new friend, her eyes falling back onto the figure they’ve been flying around for the last half hour. Clarke in skirt, long tanned legs idly swinging from where she sits on a nearby picnic table, sketching something out with a chewed and paint-chipped pencil. Lexa is struck, as she often is, by how _beautiful_ Clarke Griffin is.

 

It comes back to her, like they sometimes do. Like the first pulse of a migraine behind her eyes, squeezing around her consciousness until it’s forced to back down.

_You’re going to throw up and it won’t take any of the scars away._

_She has really started to retreat somewhere you can’t follow, somewhere beneath her skin and behind her eyes, and she’s hugging herself and shrinking inside the cradle of her elbows and spine. You strangle back a gag and god do you want the reassurance of her jut of bone and you need to feel her breathe because right now it looks like she’s starting to hyperventilate. Even her lungs have betrayed her, just another steady force in her life that was never supposed to turn against her softness._

_“Clarke,” you murmur from your place across from her, criss-cross applesauce on the foot of the bed, stilling the hand that instinctively goes out to hers._

_“Clarke, baby, you need to breathe. Look at me. Look at me. Try and match my breathing okay?” You coax her gently and to her credit she is able to lift her terrified, misted eyes up to yours, and she haltingly tries to mimic the steady rise and fall of your chest to the hitches and catches of her own._

_Slowly, she starts to calm down. She’s breathing, deep and steady, and the fat hot tears rolling down her face aren’t accompanied by a chorus of guttural sobs._

_“Shh, Clarke. That’s it. Keep breathing baby, there you go.” She looks at you then, with so much pain that it steals your breath. You taste so much of her suffering and it’s as bitter as ash in your throat._

_“Lex. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She chokes out, rushing towards you and wrapping your entire body up in an embrace. You run your hand up and down her back, whisper sweet nothings in her ear._

_“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Clarke. I should’ve…I should’ve known, I should have picked up on it. I’m sorry Clarke. I’m sorry I haven’t helped you.” You choke out, your own tears straining hot and painful where you’ve been trying to hold them back. She grabs your chin between a surprisingly firm thumb and finger and forces your head back to look at her. Her wet blue eyes are narrowed, her lips twisted up. Clarke Griffin is furious, beautiful, and you’re terrified. If anyone in all of existence can hurt you, it’s her._

_“Alexandria. Don’t you ever say that again, ok? You knew nothing, I never told you anything, and nothing that’s been happening to me is in any way your fault or mine, ok?”_

_You just nod, nod and pull her back into your chest as hard as you can while being mindful of the bruises on her wrists and the fresh lacerations lining her back and shoulders. There will be time to deal with that tomorrow. There’s always more time._

_“Ok baby. Ok. Let’s just go to sleep alright? Let’s just sleep for a little bit.”_

_It’s warm, and Clarke nods and she’s stopped crying so much. You both lay awake exhausted, just for a little bit. Just enough._

 

Lexa wrenches her head up, trying to force air into lungs that she can’t remember working. Someone is slapping her on the back and talking to her (loudly) but she can’t focus on that right now. 

 

When she flashes out like this, in the day time, fully awake, it takes a lot out of her. She’s shaking and light-headed and woozy, like she’s forgotten to drink water on a hot day. 

 

“Holy shit, Lexa. Lexxxaaaa! Are you alright or what? You were just staring off into space, twitching a little bit. Do you have seizures?”

 

You shake your head a little bit (it hurts, but, it’s effective) and you turn to smile a little at her.

 

“No, sorry, I just…I get a little these bad headaches sometimes. They kind of wipe me out.” 

 

Octavia doesn’t buy it, she can tell this right away. Her eyes sparkle a bit as she considers what Lexa has told her. Lexa knows this look— her school councilor, her mother and father, her ex-boyfriend. Suspicion. 

 

“Yeah, ok. Take your pills for it or whatever, you don’t want to act liquified when you finally get the nerve to talk to Clarkie yeah?” She says, lightly punching your shoulder. You laugh a little bit, and lean against the splintery wood of the picnic table. You can still see Clarke, glowing and serious in the warmth of the sun. You are struck with the intense desire to keep her here forever in this moment, flushed and gorgeous.

 

“Christ, I’m fucked.”

 

A cabin supervisor from a table over comes over to write you a demerit, and Octavia laughs with her head thrown back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry y'all, but major trigger warning for misgendering, disassociation, and some dubious consent. If there's anything else you need tagging please tell me and I'm happy to oblige.

“Is that what it’s always like? Every time?” Lexa’s voice is an awed whisper that breaks out over Octavia in the small space the two of them have, smushed into in the kayak as they are. Octavia’s cigarette cast half of her face in sharp orange relief, and they gently rock with the swells of the water. Lexa is drowsy and tired and the lights from the main lodge are blurred in the not-distance. 

“In my experience? Yes. If a girl puts her mouth on you, _there_ , you’re almost guaranteed to come. Now, everyone’s different though. I need fingers inside to get all the way, but a lot of people don’t.”

“What— what does it feel like?”

Octavia smirks a little, pats Lexa’s hand with playful condescending. 

“Like nothing else in the whole world, babe.”

The two of them reflect on this for a bit, rocking a little more strongly in the water. It’s dark and humid, the press of heat intense but not unwelcome, like a sauna almost. They’re far enough out in the water that the mosquitos were left behind, and all that’s left is the smell of the lake, Octavia’s cigarette and her face hollowed and filled with the orange light of the small flame balanced in-between her fingers, and the short stoppering sound of the rubber heel on Lexa’s sneaker rubbing against the side of the boat where her legs are folded.

“How many…” She trails off, embarrassed to have asked in the first place, but Octavia doesn’t seem to mind.

“Five. Clarke, two other girls, this boy on vacation once, and then Lincoln.” Lexa nods though she’s sure that Octavia can’t actually see it. She’d seen Octavia canoodling with Lincoln over eggs, whispering and flirting in the arts and crafts hut, even daring a brief kiss or two swimming last Saturday (the councilors turned a blind eye to what they presumed was heterosexual activity). He was kind, sensitive, and had an infectious laugh and smile. Lexa was very found of him and secretly glad that Octavia had someone like him for grounding. A reason to stay, just for a little longer.

“So are you and Lincoln together?” Octavia snorts at this.

“What, like dating? No. No no no. Feelings and commitment and stuff, no. Great and semi-frequent hookups? Yes.” 

Lexa hums noncommittally at this and they resume their silence, comfortable and warm as the lake water beneath them, splashed along their calves and misted through their hair. 

There’s a long space, and Lexa can feel Octavia struggling to reach out. To say something. She stays quiet.

“You know…you know that I’m not a girl, right?” Lexa hums in acknowledgment, softly.

“Ok. That’s ok Octavia. Thank you for telling me.”

She hears Octavia breath softly, in something that may be relief. 

“Yeah. Some days, what people call me just doesn’t— I don’t know, fit. So I thought maybe I was actually a boy, but. That doesn’t fit either, not all the way. Some days one fits better than the rest, or nothing works.”

“That’s ok. Just tell me what you’re comfortable with, and I’ll use that until you tell me something else, alright?” Octavia takes in another, shakier breath, and even without seeing Lexa can hear how it is saturated with tears. She waits.

“Yeah that— that would be great. They and them today, thanks.” They say with an amount of relief and sincerity that Lexa almost wants to cry. The two are silent then, for a long while. Lexa almost feels as if she’s asleep, like she’s reliving one of her dreams again. The warmth of her body indistinguishable from the warmth of the air and the water. Like floating.

“When did you know? That you liked girls. When did you figure it out?” 

“I guess I’ve always known. It always felt right, even when I knew that it wasn’t normal.” Octavia hums at this. They understand fully.

“I can only assume your parents are totally cool with it,” They snort. Lexa lets out a short, humorless laugh before they lapse into silence again. She isn’t exactly comfortable discussing these things yet, even though she knows that it’s ok. She hasn’t shaken the censorship out of her vocabulary. 

“Have you dated at all? Back home.” 

Lexa shakes her head.

“ No, definitely not. I’ve been playing it straight since…I don’t know, around seventh grade.” 

“That’s a long time. Did you ever date a guy as a cover? A lot of other girls say that’s the easiest way, finding a gay guy to date. Protects the both of you, you know?”

Lexa feels a wash of guilt, and shame come over her in the same instant her memories do. Flashes of belts and mustaches and the rough drag of callouses against her skin. Sweat and after-shave. The distant past. Flashes of a more contemporary sort pop up too, and they are the worst ones. The most vivid. HD in companion to the muted and almost film-like quality of her older rememberings. 

She lets out a long, heavy sigh. Perhaps she’s just become marginally brainwashed, perhaps she’s just sick of feeling so lonely, but she decides in that instant that Octavia is safe, and that they would not be the worst person to talk to, despite how badly she wants to back out.

“I ‘dated’ this boy in my grade last year. He thought it was real,” she says, embarrassed at how bitter the words come out, “but as you can imagine it didn’t work out.” 

_It’s not a big deal, and you know that you shouldn’t be making it one, but you want to crawl completely out of your skin. He’s_ touching _you and you_ hate _it, every inch last inch of you wishes that you could pry his hand off your thigh and go back home._

_But the part of you that wants to be normal, the part that is willing to suffer for what you know has always been a lost cause, urges you to suck it up. Let him do what he wants. Your body has never really been your own anyways. This will make him happy, and he’s nice, and you’re a liar._

_So when Mason’s dry and painless pecks started growing more and more daring two weeks ago you urged yourself to hold down your repulsion. You had miscalculated him— assumed that he was too nervous and stringy to try anything more serious than kissing. But tonight he pushes your hand down to his crotch, making you feel the bulge there, you know that you’d fucked up._

_“Uh…”_

_“Please? It’s not bad, I swear. It’ll be fast. Please? All my buddies get it.” He’d said, still keeping your hand there. You feel invisibly small, shirking back into the thrift-store smelling couch in his semi-finished basement. His mom and dad are upstairs, watching football._

_You’re a closeted lesbian trying to convince your parents (and possibly even yourself) that you can be straight. So you realize that the decision has really already been made._

_“Oh…ok.”_

_You don’t want to touch it. Your stomach is roiling and your head feels foggy and dark with clouds of anxiety. You try and pretend that your hand it someone else’s, and you’re just watching the motions from behind a screen. You don’t want to._

_But, as the story of this life goes, you do. You don’t want to and you do anyways and you cry a little bit because you can’t help it, but Mason doesn’t seem to notice. It doesn’t take very long, he was right, and when it’s over he cleans up and pecks you on the lips in thanks. You don’t feel it. You don’t feel anything, not your stomach, not your head. You head home after goodbye’s to his parents, feeling so so empty that every inch of every one of your past lives couldn’t even begin to fill the sieve of your skin._

_That night you lay awake for hours._

_You break up with Mason the next day. He cries and you feel nothing but self-hatred._

“I’m sorry you had to do that. I’m really sorry.” Octavia says. Abruptly, they slap the side of the kayak. The sound is like a shot ringing out over the still and quiet lake, and Lexa jolts upwards, heart pounding.

“I’m sorry, I’m just— I’m fucking pissed off. I’m so _angry_ , Lexa. It’s not fair. None of this is fair.”

The sound fades, and Lexa’s heart eases into a measured clip. They float. 

“I know, O. I know.”  
——————————————————————————————————————————  


“…so after, um, the first two surgeries they put me in a chair for a while. That’s when I went to the family I’m with now. They’re nice and everything, even though, y’know, I’m here. I know they think it was the right decision. They really want to give me everything.”

The room is completely silent, with every girl hanging on Raven’s words, leaning forward and at full attention. She does not share, usually, and there’s an unspoken understanding that this is a special situation. Even Mrs. Maple is going without her bag of the usual remarks and ‘helpful dialog starters’. 

“And now, uh, my legs are ok. I mean I still need the brace and everything but, it’s better than nothing. I’ve still got a little bit of car left in me, so airport security is a bitch, but other than that, yeah. I’m ok.” There’s a quiet round of giggles at this, and Raven’s gentle smile that is so hopeful and soft Lexa wants to die a little.

Lexa leans back in her chair and can’t help but to notice Octavia. They’re enthralled, entirely. Their eyes are lit up, their body tilted towards Raven in a way that seems to fill the entire room. The fullest part of their bottom lip is being worried absentmindedly between their teeth, and Lexa can see their glassy eyes sweep across the expanse of where Raven’s legs are growing out from her black shorts. Ah. 

She files that away for later, as ammo for when Octavia ribs her about her ‘crush’ on Clarke. 

The term is so limiting, but she allows it. How do you explain an obligation that isn’t in any way forced? How can you make someone come to terms with the weight of so many lifetimes of love? How can you say that your existence is pre-determinedly intertwined with Clarke’s?

When the session is over, a bit earlier than usual, she leaves quietly, flashing a small smile over to where Octavia is sitting on the arm rest of Raven’s chair, the two of them laughing quietly and completely immune to all the activity around them. 

“Where are you headed, Woods? Griffin’s going for a walk by the lake,” Raven says, wagging her eyebrows suggestively. Lexa rolls her eyes and huffs a little, embarrassed and a bit frightened by the prospect. Was she really being so obvious?

“Ah, come on babe, don’t get bent out of shape because your Clarke-boner is obvious on, like, a subatomic level. Your nucleons got it for Griff.” 

“And you two are what, subtle? Come on Raven, she—sorry O—they were practically eye-fucking you in a room full of people three minutes ago.”

Octavia scoffs, putting a hand to their chest in mock indignation.

“First of all, fuck you and your high horse Woods. Secondly: wait is that a word? Well secondly Rey and I will neither confirm nor deny such speculation. Go take your nature walk, nerd-ass.” 

Lexa makes sure to flip Octavia a well-hidden bird (she can never get away with cursing like they can) while she makes her way towards the front door. 

The campers are allotted very little free time, and the fifteen minutes between group therapy and lunch is a small and highly anticipated respite that Lexa takes advantage of to the second. 

She seeks out somewhere quiet, somewhere voices are just an occasional din and the only thing she can hear around her is the breath of trees and birds and her own lungs. She likes feeling the itch of the grass on her bare thighs, likes to imagine what she could be doing at that exact moment in given time. 

With the sun as high as it was, the weight of it on her pressed eyelids, freckling them, she thinks maybe this could be a beach somewhere remote. A single dirt path for entry, no garbage or children on plastic wakeboard or shaved ice stands. Maybe she wouldn’t even have to wear a swimsuit.

Then again, she muses, twitching her nose a bit as a gnat flutters around, maybe she’s in a desert instead. Not just remote— isolated, abandoned. Mesas, creosote, and glazed blue skies stretching to the ends of the earth. Wind, a baking sun, flo—

“Nice spot you’ve got here.” 

Lexa jolts upwards, startled by the sudden voice. 

A few feet away from where she’s lying is Clarke, smiling at the little display, rocking on her heels. 

“Yes. Clarke. Hello.” She swallows a few times against her suddenly dry throat, scrambling a little to wipe off her dirty hands.

“Hello, Lexa. Mr. David sent me to come get you. He said you have a phone call.” Clarke responds. There’s a laugh tagging on the edges of her words and her lips are pulled into a smile. Lexa’s heart is palpating and her stomach is swooping. She has no idea who could possibly want to speak to her at camp. But she’s distracted fairly quickly— her eyes scan up the length of Clarke’s long, tanned legs without her even realizing it, swooping over the expanse of her stomach, lingering at the full, full swells of—

“So, uh, are you coming with me, or do you want to hang back for a bit?” 

Lexa’s eyes shoot back up and she’s very, _very_ aware of the heavy rush of heat in her face and neck. 

“Oh, yes. I mean no. I—thank you, I’ll be there shortly.” She sputters. There’s a silence, where Clarke’s eyes scrunch a bit in confusion. 

Lexa busies herself with a show of attempting to re-tie her already perfectly tied sneaker, studiously avoiding Clarke’s gaze. She wants to sink into the earth. 

“Well…ok. I’ll see you around Lexa.” 

She mumbles a reply, too ashamed to look up after that awkward display. When she gets up and brushes herself off she can just barely make out the blur of Clarke’s retreating figure out by the ‘team-building’ obstacle course the girl’s cabins were supposed to be attempting.

At least she got an excuse— some small good to come out of what may have possibly been one of the most humiliating moments of her existence. Hell, of all her existences. 

Mr. David has his back turned to her when she makes her way to his office. She waits outside the open door, waiting as he apparently finishes up some stressful phone call.

“Yes… yes ma’am, I understand all that but— ok. Ok. She’s right here, I’ll put her on.”

He turns to her with a glare, and Lexa is confused, but before she can ask any questions a cell phone is being thrust towards her and Mr. David is motioning for her to listen.

“Hello?”

“Hi Lexa— do you remember me? I’m your cousin, Anya. Listen— I get that you probably don’t remember me, we only close wwhen you were a kid, but—“

“No, no of course I remember you!” Lexa exclaims. They had been close, as children. Sleep-overs and parties and holidays together. Anya dressed up as a vampire for Halloween, while Lexa was making due with the awkward fairy princess outfit her mother had forced her into. She distinctly recalls a family barbecue when she was nine, playing together in Anya’s big backyard. Anya was thirteen years old, lanky and cool with her black clothes and eyeliner. The two of them had been having a great time, laughing and tumbling around in the dirt before her mother had yelled at her and given her a spanking for getting her nice clothes all dirty. Anya gave her a hug when she cried. “God, Anya, I’ve missed you. It’s been what, eight years? My parents said that you and your folks had moved. Some where really far away, and that you couldn’t call?” Anya snorts at that. 

“Yeah, of course they’d say that. We did move, Lex, but that’s not reason we lost touch. I came out when I was fifteen. My parents were fine, but yours— they said I couldn’t come around anymore because I’d be a ‘bad influence’ on you.”

Lexa’s brain feels like it’s running on dial-up. The information is processing, but she just can’t seem to make sense of it.

“Wait. I don’t understand. I’m sorry they did that Anya, and I’m not surprised, but why call me now? How did you even know I was here?”

“I’m home for summer break, and my mom told me that she had heard that your parents had sent you away— Lexa, they can’t do that. They can’t treat you like that. My parents and I are going to help you. We’re going to get you out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea to write Octavia as gender queer came from the lovely possibilist and unicyclehippo so go read all their stuff.
> 
> Also come check out my tumblr @mamaweeds to ask me questions and whatever.


	5. sorry y'all the election killed this fic tbh

Ok so in the wake of the election and me being scared about actually being sent to conversion therapy I'm not gonna be continuing this story: I am very truly sorry to all of my readers, and I am so thankful for all of your feedback, but I just can't keep writing about this from a fantastical perspective when this has become to real and dangerous. 

As a summary, Anya's family would have liberated Lexa from the camp, but not before she and Clarke deepened their connection and eventually fell in love between therapy and dining hall food and kickball. Lexa is conflicted once she is given the opportunity to leave, and Clarke begs her not to go, but Lexa knows that she must in order to save herself. 

Months later, the two reconnect through a support group for people who survived the camp hosted by Octavia and Raven, who have been happily together ever since. Lexa and Clarke talk through their issues, and eventually live in happily married gay bliss with a dog and yard and Lexa gardens, it's very nice.

Thanks to you all-- I'm gonna be writing other fics, I just can't keep doing this one, I hope you all understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me on mamaweeds.tumblr.com to talk to me about fics, gay shit, and anything new york related because I'm trying to find a better bagel place in my neighborhood.


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